<< Click to Display Table of Contents >> Navigation:  Concepts > NShape Concepts Groups and Aggregations

There are two ways to compose multiple shapes into one entity, groups and aggregations. They might seem very similar at first sight but represent different ideas.

A shape group is a collection where each single shape is still a shape on its own. For example, you can select a shape within a group and modify it like any normal shape. When you move or resize a shape of a group only this shape will be modified. The others stay untouched. On the other hand, when you click on a shape in the group all shapes of the group will be selected. When the whole group is selected you can move and rotate it as a whole. It needs a second click on a shape to select it for itself.

The idea behind an aggregation however is to form a new more complex shape out of simple shapes. The resulting composition represents one shape and not a collection of shapes as it is the case for a group. When you resize an aggregation all its constituent shapes are resized correspondingly.